Leinart keeps an eye on his future

It was Friday night, Aug. 29, five months ago Thursday. The Arizona Cardinals had just wrapped up their preseason with an unremarkable 28-14 loss to Denver, contested mainly by backups.

Ken Whisenhunt, about to embark on his second season as an NFL head coach, knew that before the sun rose again, he had to make the biggest coaching decision of his life.

Whisenhunt felt he had two capable quarterbacks in Kurt Warner and Matt Leinart. Leinart had taken over the starting job during his 2006 rookie season, losing it only when he broke his collarbone five starts into 2007. But when Leinart went down, Warner put together a comeback run, altering views of a star long since tossed on the scrap heap, a clipboard-holding mentor to the 10th overall pick from Southern Cal. And Warner's 2008 training camp, at age 37, was just as good.

Still, Warner was not the Cardinals' future. Leinart apparently was. For that reason, Warner was pessimistic about his chances of emerging as the starter.

"Everything in my mind said the easy decision is going the other direction," Warner recalled Thursday, as he prepared to lead the Cardinals into their first Super Bowl ever, Sunday against the favored Pittsburgh Steelers. "The harder decision would be basically to go back on (the decision made to go with Leinart in 2006) and for me to become the starter ... I believed I'd proved to them that I still could play at a high level."

It was a short conversation that Saturday morning, Warner recalled.

"Ken called me in and said, 'We've decided to go with you. Now let's run with it.' It was short and to the point. He didn't need to explain anything else to me. ... All I wanted was that opportunity, and I was going to go out and prove him right."

Leinart has spent Super Bowl week explaining to a never-ending stream of questioners how it feels to come to the Super Bowl not expecting to play, the sort of thing he hasn't experienced since his redshirt freshman season at USC, when Carson Palmer quarterbacked the Trojans.

"Obviously, you want to play, you want to be up there," Leinart said Thursday. "There's not a day that goes by that I don't want to be the starting quarterback. That's just the competitor in me. But I realize my role this year and I've embraced it, I've helped my team, I think, and I've helped Kurt become a better player, I believe — I've pushed him. And that's what I continue to do. We'll see what happens in the future."

Leinart remembers that Friday night near the end of August, when he went 10-for-14 for 177 yards and a touchdown against the Broncos, compiling a 137.5 passer rating.

Sure, that night he thought he might be back on top again, where he belonged.

"I kind of did everything I could to show coach I could play," Leinart said. "But that was the direction we didn't go in, which was tough for me to swallow at first, just because I wanted to be the guy."

Warner can become a free agent, if he isn't franchised. He spoke Thursday of how, if the Cards win, this might be a great time to retire.

Leinart spoke again Thursday of how he believes Warner should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Listening, it was hard not to add onto his thought the phrase "as soon as possible."

This is a very different situation than either Warner or Leinart might have envisioned five months ago.